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brachypelmasmithi @lemmy.world

1y ago

Minecraft's recent EULA changes place heavy restrictions on Java servers

twitter.com /ShitpostRock/status/1687305982009819136

Just spreading awareness about whatever the fuck Mojang thinks they're doing. Given their enforcement of the EULA, or the lack thereof, this probably isn't going to have as huge of an impact, but I think it's still something worth talking about.

Here's an article on dotesports.com if you don't want to visit Twitter.

The Minecraft EULA itself as of 2nd August. I've got the attention span of a rat on cocaine, so if someone could check if Rock solid's points are an accurate summary of the EULA, I'd appreciate that.

67 comments

Servers with ANY content not suitable for 10 year olds are now prohibited
This is just ridiculous. What makes them think they get to decide what grown-ass adults do in their own private servers?
They are about a decade too late to child-proof Minecraft. A lot of the children they might even claimed to want to protect are adults by now.
- Can't be fucked to read the EULA, but the added context under the tweet says it's about pornography/gambling/etc in for profit servers.
  ... Which is still ridiculous overreach, but not what the original poster said.
  
  The link for these Usage Guidelines is not working for me for some reason, but the linked reddit thread on the article says that all private servers will be treated as if commercial. If that's correct, it's pretty concerning.
- I really can't wrap my head around why. Doing this on public servers I think is annoying, but there's at least some logic to not wanting kids to stumble into mature content. Private servers though? What could possibly be the reasoning?
  
  How exactly would Mojang enforce this for private servers?

All companies now are digging own grave for themselves. Reddit, ~~Twitter~~ X, Meta, Google and now Mojang. Interesting times we live in.
- Have any of those other companies you've named actually suffered anything?
  
  Musk has sure as hell set Twitter up to suffer quite a bit. It's a train wreck in progress, but to the uninformed layman it just looks like Musk fucking shit up with little actual blowback.
  The reality of Twitter is that it's royally fucked, it's just taking a while for the debt to build up to the point where it all falls apart. I expect a complete death of the company before November 2025. Just based on the debt load that Musk saddled the company with.
  Reddit showed that they don't care about their community or their volunteer mods, and lost most of the best moderators. That train wreck is coming, but might take a few years. Their IPO is coming, and they will do something that pisses off the community more when it does. I don't expect a fast death, or a complete death, but the IPO will definitely hurt more than it will help.
  Meta keeps getting fined by various countries, and keeps plugging along. Their Threads app is not quite taking off, but it doesn't need to... A shit company that will likely be around for at least another decade. After that, predictions become meaningless.
  Google is trying to do a web DRM to get rid of adblockers. I expect a massive EU fine in the future, and then they will quietly continue being evil. They really shouldn't have gotten rid of that motto.
  
  I think they are. The biggest threat these companies face is not needing them. Hence the bullshit google is trying to pull around their browser. When they make dumb decisions they empower alternatives. The fediverse wouldn't be where it is right now (which is an amazing growth cycle) without these companies making dumb, self deprecating, shitty decisions. It may not be obvious, but the fediverse is something altogether different than what has come before, and empowering it even a little bit is a serious existential threat to these companies, because it represents a true, unsquashable challenge to their power structures. The fediverse represents a return to the spirit of web 1.0, with the niceties of web 2.0-3.0. I kind of hate the 'Web X.0' framing in this sense, because these things are happening concurrently.
  The web 4.0 these companies are, as a cabal, trying to build is a walled garden with you as a victim to as much shit as they want to shove down your throat. The fediverse, its growth, and more importantly, its philosophical structure of open source, open access, and consent represents a kind of impurity in their walled garden that means they'll never truly be successful. Lemmy doesn't have to kill reddit. It just needs to not be killed by reddit and continue to be viable.
  There may be a hard fork coming to the internet. I can see a future where open access, anonymous and private resources depart from the internet of corporations, tracking, and identity as product. With out the fediverse that wouldn't be happening (crypto sure as shit wasn't gonna get us there).
  So yes, even if these companies aren't feeling particularly threatened at the moment (and I think some of them recognize the threat. I think Zuck sees it, hence threads), there is a true existential threat facing them. Its the world not needing them quite as much as they once did. It may not seem like much, but that is a huge threat to companies who are locked in a growth or die system. The fediverse on the other hand, doesn't suffer from a 'growth or die' meta-paradigm. It can grow slowly. It can have patience.
  
  The cynical part of me agrees, but one win that could be achieved is a pervasive anti big tech culture built on a foundation of recent corporate betrayals. The more the tech companies push, the more alienated the customers. Will they keep buying? Probably. Will they stay loyal when other options arise? Probably not.
- It's the profit imperative biting them in the ass, you can't have exponential growth in a finite system so expect these megacorps to get more and more desperate (and draconian) as the bottom of the barrel draws ever nearer.
  
  They are literally the #1 selling video game in the history of the world.
  If that's not enough, the world is fucked.
- They are attempting to extract as much wealth as possible before the collapse. I don't know what they're planning on doing with money if a collapse happens. Even a partial collapse would cause massive inflation making their dollars worthless if they don't transfer it out to something else. Unfortunately the Petrodollar exists so it's likely the collapse of the US dollar would trigger worldwide collapse.
- Don't forget Netflix

If you're a steamer or youtuber, you have to make your videos free to watch as well.
All videos (in their entirety) are free to view (for example there is no pay wall or other charge to view the videos)
- I don't know of anyone charging to watch MC videos. Maybe as Patreon bonuses?
  
  I don't remember anyone specific of the top of my head, but as well as Patreon, YouTube subscriptions also can have exclusive content, afaik.
  
  I know a YT channel that does MC videos, and has a few members only bonus videos on the side. I guess these are no longer allowed now.
  
  I think it's targeting people who get their lets plays on actually (shitty) streaming services.
- Rip patreon youtubers
  
  Does that even apply? Youtube videos are already free to watch regardless of whether you have patreon or not (barring people with 'patron exclusives')

Honestly, I've been considering minetest the real successor to minecraft. It's just really decent, and it doesn't have all the risks of minecraft being controlled by someone else including opening the game being gatekept by their centralized servers.
- Minetest is great. Love the FOSS nature of it as well. I don’t think it’ll ever see really mainstream adoption, due to the (intentional) lack of content without mods, but Minecraft itself could absolutely learn a thing or two from its cubic chunks system and tightly integrated modding system.
- I had no idea this existed, but now that I do I'm going to check it out!
  I've been hoping for a spiritual replacement since I bailed on Minecraft itself -- after many years, originally being an alpha backer -- once Microsoft apparently decided that you need to sign up for a Microsoft account just to play. Your original Mojang account is no longer good enough. I'm not doing that, even if they do give me a stupid cape. (I don't use a Microsoft account with Windows, either. I don't need to be tracked, profiled, or advertised at any more than I already am, thank you.)
  I had a feeling when the acquisition was announced that Microsoft would be the beginning of the end of Minecraft, but I have to say it took quite a while longer than I thought it would initially. And I think know what they're doing, here. Minecraft is a hugely popular platform for kids, and they're trying to mitigate potential backlash from kids being exposed to naughty language or objectionable content on private servers (which is a factor of any game that has, or is basically completely built out of, user created content). This all started with their bullshit about banning people for chat content even in private servers, and I don't think even now we've hit the bottom of the ravine on that yet, either.
- Ooh I didn't know this existed! Might check it out

Isn't Mojang now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft? How is this not EEE?
- Not EEE. This looks like a form of enshittification. It sounds like Mojang is trying to capture all value for themselves by claiming absolute control over everything.
- How is this not EEE?
  EEE is about unilaterally extending an otherwise open standard in incompatible ways to drive out the competition. The move is shitty but EEE has a specific meaning and it's not a general "MS sucks" abbreviation.
  
  I think the idea that it is EEE comes up because they promised specifically to keep the Java version running parallel to the bedrock version of Minecraft.
  But with the Java version you have free modifications and can run a server for free, while for the bedrock version the user has to pay for the mods and the server.
  Microsoft seems to try and slowly chip away from the Java version with the goal to make users move over to the bedrock version. Or perhaps they will soon ban mods for Java with an excuse like they can’t control whether the Java mods are save for children..
- I'd really doubt M$ wants to go through with the "extinguish" part of EEE, because Minecraft, and Minecraft merch, prints them money.
  Intentionally, anyhow. Whether or not they manage to pull it off via just sheer ineptitude remains to be seen.
  
  I am pretty sure they would prefer to extinguish the Java version of Minecraft, though. Because they earn more money with the bedrock version which has basically a huge item shop.
  
  Realtalk, once Hytale drops I'm probably dropping Minecraft. It's everything I want them to add but without me having 13 years of experience with the game. Something new with QOL and easy modding sounds great.

As always, you can always count on the money people eventually twatting everything up.

Are we finally going to see the death of 2b2t? Thought it'd be around forever
- Afaik they're operating on an older version of the game and thus aren't subject to new EULA updates unless they update to a version of the game that comes out afrer this EULA goes into effect
  
  Even if they updated to a new version, the hack clients developers would probably just update their custom clients to ignore Mojang's server ban list and call it a day.
  The new EULA is a joke and it's easier to tell everyone to use a third party client (which is most of the time better than the official one) than try to abide to them.
  
  In addition to that, I was told at one point that 2B2T doesn't update to a more current version because some of the administration mods they rely on are not available for newer versions.
  I don't think Microsoft will ever be able to pull the plug on 2B2T except via some kind of lawsuit; IIRC, you can configure a vanilla(ish) Java Minecraft server to not even care about authenticated users, which is right up an anarchy server's alley anyhow, so not even by banning accounts or revoking licenses can Microsoft prevent them and their players from running an instance of the Java client and server.

judging a quick read of that, it seems most if not all of the changes only apply to commercial use(thankfully), they even specify it under the personal use area,so that makes me feel a little better. That being said I made it to no name brands such as mods with branded automobiles before my ADHD brain lost interest as well

A rat on cocaine would have had an enhanced attention span
- That would be meth, my friend.

Another one bites the dust. Sad to see Mojang digging their grave like every other company these past few weeks... I keep seeing MineTest poping up, might have to give it a try soon enough.
- is minetest good? i remember it being kinda shit
  
  Minetest is confusingly both a game engine and a playable game. You probably only ever played the basic sandbox game it comes with by default and thought that was it had to offer. There exist much more feature rich and developed games on the minetest engine. many many games and mods and texture packs.
  You may be interested to know about the game 'mineclone2' developed on the minetest engine, which aims to be a faithful FOSS clone of minecraft specifically. I am actually a dev of mineclone2 and can tell you I believe that it is the next best thing to the real deal. A lot of hard work and time and polish has gone into the game by many talented people. Its not perfect, there are rough edges, some things still need work, but its a stable and faithful vanilla experience. Its far superior to minecraft in both performance and modability. Plus bugs are getting squashed and more features are getting added all the time both to mineclone2 and the minetest game engine.
  Mineclone2 git: https://git.minetest.land/MineClone2/MineClone2
  minetest engine homepage: https://www.minetest.net/
  Mineclone2 Lemmy community: https://lemmy.world/c/mineclone2
  Mineclone2 mastadon: https://mastodon.social/@MineClone2@fosstodon.org
  My lo-fi gemini proxy mirrors for minetest and mineclone2. https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/tilde.team/~smokey/minetest-mirror.gmi https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/tilde.team/~smokey/mcl2-mirror.gmi
- This sort of thing seems to happen far too often since Microsoft took over.

Ah, I guess, that would be why I saw this random mainstream streamer today "just checking out Minetest", while also having set up their own server for their friend group and everything...

The software 2B2T and other major servers run is typically custom made. The reason servers like 2B2T need a player queue is because the official Minecraft server software is garbage and runs everything on a single CPU thread, placing a firm upper limit on how much stuff can run on a server. Server networks like Hypixel shuffle players through lobbies and mini games on various different servers to spread the load, but since 2B2T is a single world, they have to run a custom, highly optimized server file to be able to handle their player numbers. If Mojang would invest in developing more scalable server software, player queues would be a thing of the past without having to ban them, but Mojang would rather harass server owners for having to accommodate Mojang's poor product than actually fix the underlying issue

Some time ago, I like making my own servers in localhost, for testing plugins, configurations and more, but this is not good. Where is the freedom to make servers at your own? Well, making not p2w and not breaking obvious things, for this part:
Servers with ANY content not suitable for 10 year olds are now prohibited
It just problem of the parents. Also.
Any server, piece of online content such as video or other may be taken down due to any reason whatsoever
This can be regulated with plugins for chat if it is post on the chat.

It's a problem of the owners who make these decisions, they can make the server better or not.

This shit is the reason I haven't touched Minecraft in nearly two years.

67 comments